What's happening in Perth

May-Ring Chen, 69, appeared in the State Administrative Tribunal on Thursday, in the first court hearing related to a police raid across Perth and regional WA last year. 

“They come tearing down the road doing wheel stands with no lights on or helmets.”

A western suburbs property deal has soured to the point of defamation proceedings being launched against a prominent Dalkeith real estate agent.

Community groups in the City of Swan are elated at news that plans for a data centre neighbouring the Helena River have been withdrawn.

May’s headliner is Brian Cox at RAC Arena, but there are a lot of other big events onb this month: a Margaret River winemaker dinner, debate club at Lawson Flats, and bottomless drinks in Northbridge that finish before dinner. 

Here’s what’s on this month.

A community call to action: volunteering at Whiteman Park

There are plenty of ways to support your community, but few are as tangible — or as local — as lending a hand at Whiteman Park. Each year, tens of thousands of visitors go through the gates to experience Western Australia’s living history, bushland and waterways, cultural experiences, and family events. Much of what they see and enjoy is powered by volunteers.

More than 600 people have already donated their time across the Park’s volunteer-led attractions, welcoming guests, guiding tours, restoring machinery, caring for collections, gardening, supporting events, and keeping the backstage wheels turning. The roles are as varied as the people who fill them — whether you bring a trade, a knack for storytelling, a love of heritage, or simply a few hours to spare, there’s likely a place where your skills can make a visible difference.

For anyone curious about getting involved, Whiteman Park is holding a volunteer information session on Saturday, May 23rd, from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. Representatives from the attractions will be on hand to answer questions and help prospective volunteers find a starting point that suits their interests and availability.

Places can be reserved by calling 9209 6000 or emailing enquiries@whitemanpark.com.au.

Brian Cox brings Emergence to RAC Arena

Professor Brian Cox returns to Perth on Saturday, May 23rd, with his new world tour, Emergence — the follow-up to Horizons, which played to close to half a million people globally. The show traces how the universe builds dazzling complexity from a small set of physical laws, taking the audience from the cosmic web of galaxies down to snowflakes and the structure of the human brain.

Cox has spent the last 15 years fronting BBC science programmes, including Wonders of the Solar System and The Planets. For Emergence, he’s pulled together scientists, musicians, filmmakers, and graphic artists, with the production running across some of the largest LED screens currently available.

Where: RAC Arena
When: Saturday, May 23rd
Tickets are available here.

Debate Club lands at Lawson Flats

Lawson Flats has a new addition to its calendar this May: Debate Club, an evening of arguments on a question shaping communities right now — exclusivity versus inclusivity. One team makes the case for open doors and broader perspectives; the other defends curation, trust, and a strong identity over scale.

A judging panel calls a winner, but the final vote goes to the room. Dinner at Luis’ follows for anyone who isn’t quite ready to go home.

When: Tuesday, May 19th
Where: Lawson Flats
Cost: Members $15.00 per person, public $25.00 per person (drink on arrival included)

Daycap at The Rechabite

Bottomless drinks have moved to the afternoon. Daycap runs at The Rechabite every Saturday from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm with free-flowing pours, a DJ keeping the room moving, and a share-style menu from Chef Navarre Topp.

The drinks list runs through Lemoncello and Yuzu Spritz, Sakura Blossom, and Silk Road cocktails alongside wines and tap beers. The food includes crispy prawn wontons, kimchi dumplings, and wagyu yukhoe tartare, with vegan and gluten-free dishes integrated into the menu rather than tacked on as an afterthought. Wrapping at 4:00 pm leaves you well-positioned to either head home or push straight on into Northbridge.

When: Every Saturday, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Where: The Rechabite, Northbridge

Lawson Flats Wine Club turns two

A day after Debate Club, Lawson Flats throws a second birthday for its Wine Club. Host Emma Farrelly pours six wines across the evening — bubbles to open, something from a magnum, and a blind tasting with a bottle on the line for whoever calls it correctly.

Cake is locked in. So is a playlist. A DJ is not out of the question.

When: Wednesday, May 20th
Where: Lawson Flats
Cost: Members $40.00 per person, public $70.00 per person

Hot Keys piano nights at Deadbeat Bar

Friday and Saturday nights at Deadbeat Bar belong to Hot Keys — live piano, crowd-led requests, and group sing-alongs of the classics, usually a few drinks past the original key. Pre-night or post-night, it works either way.

When: Every Friday and Saturday
Where: Deadbeat Bar, 440 Murray Street, Perth

Salsa lessons at The Leederville 

Every Tuesday from 6:30 pm, the Red Room upstairs at The Leederville runs beginner salsa with Liliana and the Ritmo Caliente crew. No experience expected, no partner required; just a way to do something on a Tuesday night that isn’t dinner and a movie.

When: Tuesdays from 6:30 pm
Where: The Leederville Precinct, 2/742 Newcastle Street, Leederville

Producer Wine Dinner — McHenry Hohnen at City Cellar

McHenry Hohnen winemaker Jacopo Dalli Cani is in town for an intimate dinner in Cherubino City Cellar’s Private Dining Room. The Margaret River estate works biodynamically across three vineyards in the southern reaches of the region, with classics like Chardonnay and Cabernet alongside Marsanne, Roussanne, and Grenache.

Six wines are on pour, including the 2024 Hazel’s Chardonnay, the 2023 Grenache, the 2020 Hazel’s Cabernet Sauvignon, and the 2019 Rolling Stone — paired with a relaxed dinner from the City Cellar kitchen.

When: Thursday, May 14th, from 6:30 pm
Where: City Cellar

The post What’s On In Perth This May appeared first on So Perth

Michael Woodley welcomed the court decision that awarded the Yindjibarndi people $150 million for cultural and economic losses, but noted the state could have stayed neutral on the compensation fight.

Luke Ritchie, 35, appeared in Joondalup Magistrates Court on Thursday after he was arrested on charges not related to the woman’s death.

Police have charged a Perth man with drugs and weapons offences as they investigate the death of a woman whose body was left on a paramedic’s stretcher in Joondalup on Wednesday morning.

Follow our live coverage here.

With more councils falling apart across WA, the state government hopes local government inspectors, monitors and adjudicators will be enough to get them back on track.

If you bought your investment property before 7:30 pm last night, nothing about negative gearing or the capital gains tax discount changes for you. Not now, not in 2027, not ever. 

The 2026 Budget rewrites the rules for future investors and introduces long-discussed structural changes to how Australia taxes capital gains. The reforms have a 14-month runway before they begin, and a long tail of transitional arrangements, meaning even the people they do affect won’t see a dollar of impact until well into 2028. 

Here is what is changing.

What is negative gearing?

Watching the discussion around negative gearing for the last couple of years, especially on social media, one thing is clear: most people don’t actually know what negative gearing is. 

The common misconception is that mortgage payments are tax-deductible. Not quite how it works.

Negative gearing is when the costs of owning an asset — say, an investment property — exceed the income it generates — i.e., rent. For an investment property, which is what most people talk about when discussing negative gearing, that could include things like interest on the loan, maintenance costs, etc etc. These losses can then be used to reduce your taxable income.

Residential property is often negatively geared for the first few years until it reaches a point where the loan amount and subsequent interest drop to a point where they are less than the rental income. Then, the income is subject to income tax in the same way as other income streams.

The two changes you need to understand

From July 1st 2027, two things happen.

The first is that negative gearing will be limited to new builds only. If you buy an existing house and rent it out at a loss after that date, you can still claim those losses, but only against income from residential property. Unused losses carry forward to future years.

The second is that the 50% capital gains tax discount disappears for assets bought after July 1st 2027. In its place, Treasury is restoring cost-base indexation against the Consumer Price Index — the system Australia used between 1985 and 1999 — alongside a new minimum 30% tax rate on real capital gains. The indexation does the same job the 50% discount was meant to do: strip out inflation from the taxable gain. The minimum tax stops someone with a very large gain in a year of low other income from paying almost nothing on it.

There’s a related but separate change to discretionary trust distributions, which will be subject to their own 30% minimum tax from July 1st 2028. That one will mostly affect higher-income families who use trust structures to split income among family members.

What does it mean if you already own an investment property?

Almost nothing. The changes are being grandfathered. Any property held at 7:30 pm last night, including any where contracts have been exchanged but settlement hasn’t happened, keeps the existing negative gearing treatment for the rest of the time you own it.

The CGT side is slightly more nuanced but still favourable. If you sell the property in five years, you get the existing 50% discount applied to the growth between purchase and July 1st 2027, and indexation plus the new minimum tax applied to the growth after that date. Treasury’s own worked example — Michael, who sells two years after the changes — comes out paying about $2,200 more in tax on a property that gained $60,000 in those two years. Across the full holding period, the difference isn’t that significant.

What does it mean if you’re thinking about buying one?

This is where the policy has been designed to have the most effect. There are three pathways:

If you sign before July 1st 2027, on an existing home, you get negative gearing under the current rules through June 30th 2027, and then you switch to the new restricted regime where losses can only offset residential property income from that point forward. The CGT treatment is split across the two regimes.

If you buy after July 1st 2027, and choose an existing home, you can still deduct rental losses against other residential property income and carry them forward, but you can’t offset them against wages. The CGT change applies in full. Treasury’s modelled investor — Yoonseo, buying a $519,000 property and holding for ten years — pays an extra $186.00 in tax across the whole investment period compared to the old rules. 

If you buy after July 1st 2027, and choose a new build, almost nothing changes. You keep negative gearing in full, and when you sell, you can choose between the old 50% CGT discount or the new indexation regime, whichever produces the lower tax bill. The Government wants to encourage investors to use their money to increase the overall housing stock.

“New build” has a specific definition. An off-the-plan apartment counts. A duplex built where one house used to stand counts. Construction on previously vacant land counts. A granny flat doesn’t count. A knock-down rebuild that replaces one house with one house doesn’t count. A renovation, regardless of size, doesn’t count. The test is whether the work adds dwellings to the housing stock.

What it means for first-home buyers

This is the cohort the policy is designed to help, and Treasury is explicit about why. Since 1999, when the 50% CGT discount was introduced, average house prices have risen more than twice as fast as average full-time earnings. The homeownership rate among Australians aged 25 to 34 fell by seven percentage points between 2001 and 2021. The reforms are framed as an attempt to flatten that curve.

Treasury’s modelling estimates 75,000 additional owner-occupiers over the next decade as a result of the changes, described in the Government’s own fact sheet as “equivalent to reversing around 10 years of declines in the home ownership rate.” That’s a national figure, and Perth is over-represented in the first-home buyer cohort relative to the east coast.

Whether it works depends almost entirely on what happens to investor demand on the ground. If investors retreat from the established market faster than first-home buyers can step into it, the result is softer prices and fewer transactions. If they retreat more slowly, prices keep rising, and the policy moves the needle very little. 

Our prediction is that the policy changes have little to no effect on housing affordability. The changes don’t materially affect the long-term profitability of investing in residential real estate. This feels more like policy designed to attract headlines and encourage voter behaviour than it does to actually reform how taxation is applied. 

How will it affect renters?

Treasury’s modelling estimates an increase of less than $2.00 a week at the median rent. This takes into account the expected downward pressure from the housing supply measures elsewhere in the Budget.

REIWA’s view is sharper. Investors supply more than 86% of WA’s rental properties, and chief executive Suzanne Brown has flagged that any policy that nudges investors out of the market will hit Perth renters harder than the national average suggests. Her concern is timing as much as anything else. Perth’s vacancy rate sat at 2.0% in March 2026, and REIWA’s forecast for the year has median house prices rising more than 10% and unit prices rising 15% to 20%. Supply is below the February 2021 peak, and the population has grown significantly since then.

The Government’s counter to that argument is the $6.3 billion total it now has earmarked for housing-enabling infrastructure, including a new $2 billion Local Infrastructure Fund, and the foreign-buyer ban on established homes, which has been extended to mid-2029.

What should investors do?

Probably nothing this week, or at all, to be honest.

The post Negative Gearing, Capital Gains Tax, And What Last Night’s Budget Means For Perth Property appeared first on So Perth

Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his fifth Federal Budget last night, framing it as the most ambitious tax overhaul in 26 years. For Perth households, the headline news is a pair of new personal tax cuts, the biggest rewrite of negative gearing and capital gains tax in a generation, and a $12 billion commitment to expand the Henderson Defence Precinct south of the city.

The new tax measures take effect in 2026–27 and 2027–28. The negative gearing and capital gains tax changes don’t begin until July 1st 2027. Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson called the Budget “weird” and a package of “broken promises, higher taxes, lower living standards and fewer homes”, pledging to repeal the property reforms if the Coalition wins office. The next 12 months will likely be dominated by Senate negotiations and industry lobbying.

What’s new for workers

Two new personal tax measures are landing on top of the cuts already legislated in previous Budgets.

The first is a $1,000 instant tax deduction, effective from the 2026–27 financial year. Workers can knock $1,000 off their taxable income for work-related expenses without keeping receipts. Treasury estimates 6.2 million Australians, or 42% of taxpayers, will use it, for an average benefit of $205.00.

The second is the new $250.00 Working Australians Tax Offset, a permanent annual tax cut beginning in 2027–28. It effectively lifts the tax-free threshold by nearly $1,800 to $19,985.

For a worker on average earnings of $81,245, Treasury’s modelling estimates a cumulative tax cut of $1,978 in 2026–27 and $2,496 from 2027–28, rising to roughly $2,700 if the new instant deduction is used. 

Negative gearing and CGT — the “broken promise”

This is the part Chalmers is calling generational, and the part Tim Wilson has already promised to repeal. From July 1st 2027, negative gearing will be limited to new builds only, and the 50% capital gains tax discount will be replaced with inflation indexation plus a minimum 30% tax on real capital gains.

Every property held at 7:30 pm last night is fully grandfathered, so existing investors are not affected. The changes hit future buyers of established homes, and Treasury says only about 230,000 Australians a year acquire a negatively geared property — roughly 1% of taxpayers. Investors who buy new builds can still negatively gear and can choose between the old 50% discount or the new indexation regime when they sell.

REIWA chief executive Suzanne Brown has flagged concerns that the changes will push some investors out of the WA market at a time when Perth needs more rentals, not fewer. Investors supply more than 86% of WA’s rental properties, and the vacancy rate sat at 2.0% in March; well under the 2.5% to 3.5% range REIWA considers balanced. Treasury’s counter-modelling estimates the rent impact at under $2.00 a week and projects 75,000 additional owner-occupiers over the decade.

There’s a separate, dedicated explainer on the negative gearing and CGT changes coming on So Perth, because it’s such a big subject and hot topic that people think will be the silver bullet to make housing more affordable. Hint: It won’t affect housing affordability in any meaningful way and will likely widen the wealth inequality gap.

Henderson is the biggest WA story

Easy to lose in the noise, but the single biggest dollar figure for Western Australia in this Budget is the $12 billion initial commitment to expand the Henderson Defence Precinct south of Perth. Independent advice puts the eventual decade-long bill closer to $25 billion, and Defence is projecting 10,000 direct jobs over the next 20 years, plus subcontracting work for hundreds of WA small and medium businesses.

Henderson is being built out to handle the construction of naval ships, the sustainment of surface combatants, and docking for AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines from the early 2030s onward. A further $30 million in this Budget covers design work and interim facilities for the non-defence industry being displaced to make room. The flow-on effect through Cockburn, Kwinana, and Rockingham will run for two decades.

Cheaper meds and a permanent urgent care guarantee

The Government is spending $5.9 billion to list new medicines on the PBS, including treatments for cystic fibrosis, chronic kidney disease, and several cancers. The RSV vaccine Arexvy is being added to the National Immunisation Program for eligible older Australians at a cost of $449.3 million.

The 137 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics — Perth has them in Armadale, Joondalup, Midland, Rockingham, Cockburn, and elsewhere — are being made permanent with $1.8 billion in funding plus $580.2 million each year going forward. The Government’s target is that nine in ten GP services will be bulk billed by 2030. As of January, the national rate was 81.4%.

What’s the catch?

The 2026–27 underlying cash deficit is $31.5 billion. The Government claims $63.8 billion in savings, with the largest single chunk — $37.8 billion over four years — coming from NDIS reforms. The fine print on those reforms includes standardised functional capacity assessments, tighter plan reassessment rules, and an explicit return to “the original intent” of the scheme. Early media reporting has flagged that the new eligibility tests could result in significant numbers of existing participants being reassessed under the scheme over time. The detail will dominate the Senate inquiry to follow.

Inflation is forecast to peak at around 5% mid-year, real GDP growth is being downgraded from 2.25% to 1.75%, and Treasury has been frank that the Middle East oil shock is the main reason. The Budget commits $14.8 billion to a longer-term fuel resilience package: a $3.2 billion strategic Fuel Security Reserve, a $7.5 billion Fuel and Fertiliser Security Facility, and a 20% domestic gas reservation from July 2027. The temporary excise cut that has been in place at the bowser since April 1st runs until the end of June.

What happens now, and what’s missing?

Most of these measures still need to pass Parliament. While the Coalition opposes the property reforms, Wilson has signalled support for the $250.00 tax offset, the permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off for small business, and the $2 billion housing infrastructure fund. The property tax fight will likely dominate headlines across Australia for the next few months.

What’s missing is any plan to give the people what they want and adequately tax multinationals and gas exports.

The post Tax Cuts, Negative Gearing Changes, And $12 Billion For Henderson: What Perth Got From The 2026 Federal Budget appeared first on So Perth

David Pye was found guilty of murder after trained sniper Ben Johnston told a court how he was paid to shoot bikie heavyweight Nick Martin at Kwinana Motorplex in 2020.

The state government has now announced legislation to give WA’s Building Commissioner more power to stop building companies trading while they’re in financial trouble.

Gina Rinehart’s companies Hancock Prospecting and Hope Downs Iron Ore have filed two appeal notices to the finding delivered by Justice Jennifer Smith in April.

Follow our live coverage here.

A supporter of a mother who lost her two children in a car crash has been involved in an altercation with a photographer from The West Australian.

A motion for a review was made by a resident after claiming locals were “deeply concerned with council planning staff’s interpretation and response on planning issues.”

The federal budget papers show the majority of transport infrastructure spending in Western Australia will be focused on the proposed Westport precinct with $552 million allocated to upgrades to Anketell Road.

The figure falls well short of the $1 billion in cultural and economic losses the Yindjibarndi people were seeking.